


Happy Valentine's Day

by Silvered_Fox



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6024310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvered_Fox/pseuds/Silvered_Fox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valentine's greetings</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Valentine's Day

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains **Spoilers**
> 
> Both spoilers for the first game and references to the second game so it's best to wait on it until after finishing them. Bit of a spur of the moment project.
> 
> Gift fic for epobbp to cheer her up from school stress.

Junpei set down the freshly acquired flowers and chocolates and took a seat with a faint smile. 

“Hey Akane” 

The scent of the flowers mixed in the air with the scent of the small candle that had been left burning. 

He traced the lines of her face with his eyes and looked away with a blush focusing instead on the drip of wax slowly making it’s way down the candle as it burned the time away. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

The fluttering from a gust of wind squeezing through the window toward the little candle, and then the quiet as the gust died and the flame settled back to a gentle burn was his only reply. 

He looked back at the picture. Every year he felt utterly ridiculous giving flowers to the memory of a person he hadn’t seen in years, and every year he found the time to pause in whichever country he had ended up in to pick up some flowers, local chocolate and a candle. 

He was trying to remember when he’d even started the tradition. It was just something he’d always done after the Nonary game. 

One day, 3 and a half months after starting out on his search, he’d passed a flower shop proclaiming in reds and blushes and soft bears that _Today is Valentine’s Day!_

And the realization hit him that he might never see her again. He was here alone, and she… well she could be anywhere. He wasn’t sure exactly what was telling him that but especially after the life or death psychic experience he’d just lived through, he had learned his gut was usually right.

He’d walked on autopilot into the small shop and came out with just a few things. Trinkets really. Somewhere in his heart he tried to ignore the faint hope that if he had gifts at the ready she’d be right around the corner. His quest would be over and he could give her the flowers held loosely in one fist. 

She’d apologize. He would apologize. They would both go off together - He’d make her see that he could help her. Whatever her reasons for running off might be he had to tell her they didn’t matter to him. 

After all they had been through she had to have some grasp of a master plan that he could only guess at. If he could help her see that she didn’t need any explanation for why she left. He just wanted to see her again.

That day he wandered the town until midnight, when he checked into the first hotel he could find as he hit the end of his energy, and sat looking at the flowers he’d had left over.

He set up a small picture that he still had. Lit the candle. Ate a candy, and wished Akane a Happy Valentine’s Day in his heart, wherever she actually was. Whatever she was doing. Whoever she was with, and tried to memorize her features and remember that last time he had seen her.

Trying not to think about how sentimental it was to celebrate a day all alone he crushed down the tiny spark of hope that had filled him that he’d actually FIND her this time. It was a long shot anyways. If Akane Kurashiki wanted to disappear- and she obviously did, it would take more than a few months to unearth her again.

If he didn’t find her this year, and then the next and then the next, what would happen? Would his memory fade? Would he start to lose the clarity of detail that he still had thinking of her?

Would she become faceless to him and fade from his heart?

Would he even recognize her as the years passed them by?

The next year he spent Valentine’s day in America in hiding. Following the rumor of a lead that he only slightly had faith in, but unwilling to overlook any possibility there might be at catching the trail.

 _St. Valentine’s rolls around again._ He stopped in a store and picked out a candle and small box of chocolate, ignored the dust and tossed some coins on the abandoned counter on principal. As he continued wandering down the road a bit more some small wildflowers he’d come across made their way into his pack. 

When he stopped for the night he made sure to hold the image of her as she was a year and 3 and a half months ago firmly in his mind. He made sure to remember every detail. The crystals in her hair. The way her smile would turn mischievous as she teased him with things she knew would fluster him, precisely because she knew she could fluster him. The image of her. ALIVE. Against all odds.

The memory of every facet of her face, to make sure that for another year he wouldn’t forget.

And so a decade passed him by. Surviving. Remembering. Searching. Waiting. 

He smiled again to the company of the small worn picture. He’d been carrying it for as long as he could remember now. The edges fading and softened by the time that was ticking by, sapping more and more of his memories, but not this. Not her.

Each year he wished her a Happy Valentine’s Day, and each year he still failed in his search. But he couldn’t give up. 

He sat back and let the silence of the room and the faint glow of the candle that was his company warm him. One of the only familiarities in his ever changing world. Continents and cities, towns, and backwater villages had all flowed behind him, even though they never took him close enough to the object of his search. Tragedy and loss remained the only other constant in the world they now lived in.

He opened up the outdated box he’d gotten ahold of, and popped one of the chocolates into his mouth as a tear crept down one cheek.

“Happy Valentine’s Day Akane”


End file.
